What Is a Belly or Navel Piercing?

Learn all about belly piercing, aka navel piercing, from professional piercer Owen Beane in this Howcast video.

Transcript

Hello, I'm Owen Beane, I work at Chameleon Tattoo in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chameleonbodyarts.com is the website. Chameleon Tattoo's been here more than 10 years, but ten years as such with tattooing, over the last 14 years I've been doing body piercing here in Cambridge and I'll be talking to you about piercings today. What you need to know about belly piercing is that it's actually called navel piercing and you don't pierce a belly. You pierce the navel, which is actually the technical medically accurate term for the belly button. Not that you need to worry too much about that but, it is actually a navel piercing. The placement, the depth that the piercing goes is very, very important. A piercing that's too deep in the navel is going to have a lot of problems because of how much movement there is in that area and a piercing that is too shallow, like too close to the edge of the lip of skin is going to, most likely, reject, which is a process that the body can do similar to when you can't get a splinter out in time. It'll reject it. The jewelry is very important. The length and how the jewelry length relates to how much tissue you pierce is very important. Roughly three-eighths of an inch of tissue pierced and the jewelry length is seven-sixteenth of an inch. The curve barbell, which is shaped like a little banana is the best piece possible to do it with and there's many variations on that but, anything is better than the bead ring, which is a hoop which really sticks out a whole lot and is available for getting caught and bumped and irritated by a lot of everyday activities that you don't really avoid.